Word: heroisms
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Among the highest and rarest medals for heroism in the nation's gift are the Distinguished Service Cross (for "extraordinary heroism . . . against an armed enemy") and the Silver Star (for "gallantry in action"). But by last week the Cross and the Star were beginning to seem neither so high nor so rare...
Another category is the "Superman" theme--with emphasis on the bravery of the officers. In this one, a limping bomber, armed with a book of matches and three drums of gasoline, takes every chance in the annals of heroism, claiming half the enemy fleet destroyed; the other half is taken care of by a submarine commander, C. Dexter Collins of Chestnut Hill. Among the sub crew are Levine from Brooklyn, Gambaroni from the other side of the tracks, and George Washington Lincoln from Georgia...
Despite uncountable acts of individual and group heroism, the morale of the surviving U.S. troops had been severely shaken by the knowledge that all their shiny weapons and equipment, their sensational blitz tactics, their mountain of supplies, their tanks, trucks, artillery and air power could not hold back a horde that moved on foot, without air support, without armor and with hardly any weapon larger than a mortar. The American fighting man had moved a long way from the revolutionary rabble of 1775; he had become, in a manner of speaking, the British Redcoat of 1950-confident of superiority...
Modern technology has undermined heroism, Levin maintained. With the conscription of large-scale armies and the development of the airplane and the bomb, the individual has come to count less and less. Defending Norman Mailer's book, "The Naked and the Dead," which in no sense justified war, Levin asserted that the only real relationship between war and literature has been and should continue to be the truth...
What is odd is that Harvard defenders are willing and enthusiastic about performing this thankless heroism week after week. They leave the comfort of the stands, the solace of their companions in misery on the homeward trek over the Anderson Bridge, and, in some cases, their dates. In exchange, they have an opportunity to be punched, kicked, knocked down, disrobed, and robbed by hordes of boisterous invaders from other colleges and waves of enterprising gamins...